Software Inc. News

Slanted roofs are finally in! I hope this makes up for the slightly misleading roofs in the town map screenshots I released, leading up to alpha 10.

Slanted roofs are currently purely cosmetic. I'll try to figure out some way to utilize them in a future update, but for now, they are free in-game.

I made some big changes to the DLL modding system, which will break all current DLL mods. See changes at the end of this post.

This marks the end of alpha 10. I'm keeping Alpha 10.7 in testing for a short while, to make sure there aren't any major issues.

• Fixed employee working hours in calendar window going 1 hour too long
  
• Fixed modded furniture with lights stopped working
  

• Added slanted roofs
  
• New Autumn track by Sinnott Soundworks
  
• Added 2 new startup maps, a garage and a skyscraper
  
• Basements are now separated for blueprints and cloning
  
• Doubled starting cash on easy mode
  
• Changing team arrival and leave times will now take immediate effect
  
• Whether project management makes a product in-house will now depend on base product
  

UX changes

• Build menu category list now uses thumbnails instead of checkboxes and text
  
• Added calendar window when date is clicked to see employee and staff working hours
  
• Ability to manage staff room assignment from staff window
  
• Pressing the focus button (space by default) now cycles between all selected objects
  
• Ability to highlight unsupported rooms if cloning or blueprint creation fails
  

Fixes

• Fixed room grouping bugging out when re-grouping rooms
  
• Fixed bug regarding how door blockage is checked for doors to upper floor parking. Doors going nowhere or in basement will now show as blocked
  
• Various other fixes
  

DLL modding

• ModMeta is now an Abstract Class rather than an Interface and the FloorMod has been updated to show examples
  
• DLL mods will now be queried to save and load data from save files
  
• Changed WindowManager interface to avoid misuse of active window lists that would cause crash (Use OnlyHide, StartHidden, Shown and OnClose to control lifecycle)
  
• Game assembly now includes xml documentation to help develop dll mods in Visual Studio (Only some of the codebase have been commented so far, mostly UI stuff)
  
• Improved logged message when an error occurs loading a dll mod
  

XML modding

• Deprecated mesh and snappoint Parent tag in furniture mods and added Parent ATTRIBUTE to all tags that searches everything in the furniture with a name(Use ComponentName tag to name Meshes and InteractionPoints, Name tag for Transforms)
  
• Multiple and custom lights for modded furniture using the LampScript's Lights variable(will automatically find all light components in a furniture if not manually set, at the expense of performance)
  
• Modded furniture can now optionally have the IsIconic variable set to an array of category names, if it should be used as a thumbnail for custom categories
  

This patch contains fixes for every bug reported in-game since the official release of alpha 10.


I've taken some much needed time off since alpha 10 released, which is why I've been mostly quiet on social media. I plan on releasing another Alpha 10 update introducing slanted roofs, after which I'll move on to Alpha 11.

The planned features, as they are listed on Trello now, will not change at this point. I will most likely still randomly add features not on Trello, like the previously added multi-floor parking, outdoor areas and upcoming slanted roofs, but I'm aiming for beta at this point, which means a complete freeze on new gameplay changing features (not including what's on Trello). I don't expect to reach beta within at least one year. Once in beta, development will focus on bugs, balancing, steam integration, localization and adding content.

• Fixed a bug that would allow a product to get sales with any price, if it was the sole release on an OS with active users
  
• Fixed game freezing due to HR hiring more than 300 employees in one go and optimized team compatibility calculation a bit
  
• Fixed deleting rooms under unowned roads when buying plot and added a warning
  
• Fixed being able to see and control product under development by going to product details from design document window
  
• Fixed tutorial arrows when UI is scaled
  
• Fixed money, reputation and market recognition dropdown panels not closing in build mode
  
• Fixed game breaking when filtering columns in product detail window
  
• Fixed default custom material for modded furniture having full emission/glow (use _EmissionColor)
  
• Fixed some issues with AC and central heating not updating when being moved or not having correct Type
  
• Fixed marketing deal not showing progress due to wrong value scaling
  
• Fixed debug spawning guests breaking game(will also fix bugged saves)
  
• Clarified error message when trying to change price of a free product
  
• Various other fixes
  

Alpha 10 is now stable enough for an official release. I might still have some changes that are big enough to warrant an update or two for Alpha 10. I want to cram as many features in as possible before moving on to Alpha 11, since the bulk of features planned for Alpha 11 will render Alpha 10 saves completely incompatible, as usual.

If you are not done with your Alpha 9 save file and want to continue playing Alpha 9, you can switch to the "old" branch by right clicking the game in Steam and going to properties and then betas.

I recommend going through the tutorials, as they have been updated to reflect changes in gameplay and new additions. A lot of strategies and play styles from Alpha 9 will not work in Alpha 10, since hiring and employee skills have been overhauled.

• Ability to lease rooms
  
• Ability to relocate company
  
• New plot system
  
• Added map editor, town map, map generation string, rain and thunder
  
• Multi-floor parking
  
• Ability to mod room material textures
  
• Overhauled hiring mechanic and employee skill system
  
• Overhauled employee satisfaction mechanic and added customizable employee benefits
  
• Ability to assign multiple roles per employee
  
• Ability to control subsidiary releases and assign tasks
  
• 5 new tracks from Sinnott Soundworks
  
• Added ability to change the price of a product
  
• Removed scenarios and added ability to take out loans in new game screen
  
• Overhauled temperature mechanics to instantly reflect changes instead of simulating in realtime
  
• Software sales are now calculated per OS market, so software released for different OSs are no longer in direct competition
  
• Plus massive amounts of bug fixes, QOL improvements and optimizations
  

Finally, I want to stress that Software Inc. is still in alpha, which means major features are still in development, so the gameplay might feel unbalanced at times, which is only exacerbated by the fact that nothing in Software Inc. is scripted. Sometimes the market lines up in a way that makes the game very easy, kind of like how Software Inc. became this (relatively) big success, considering I'm just one person who hasn't released any other games before. I've tried my best to balance the market, but I've also tried to keep it to a minimum, as the effort is basically wasted in the long run.

• Rebalanced marketing deal and hosting deal reputation effect and made companies cancel deals with bad player performance
  
• Made computer-auto-assign more likely to assign employees to computers in rooms that fit their role, if assigned
  
• IT support would sometimes not unreserve a PC, making it unavailable for use by employees for a random amount of time
  

• Added rain and thunder
  
• Added tutorial arrows to context menu
  

Fixes

• Fixed not saving employees' current retirement fund sum (Was still deducted from company monthly, so this was purely cosmetic)
  
• Fixed tutorial bugging out when going from Welcome to Leasing tutorial
  

Optimizations

• Switched to PA Particle Field system for snow and rain
  

• Added interaction point indicator when placing furniture
  
• You can now rotate snapping furniture using keyboard, instead of just click dragging
  

Fixes

• Fixed furniture placed on high shelves not being selectable
  
• Doorways that are blocked weren't ignored by pathfinding system, causing employees and staff to give up instead of trying alternative routes when pathfinding to a room
  
• Couldn't translate software features in product detail window
  
• Loosing reputation on marketing deals
  
• Going to build mode, pressing esc, and esc again shows non build mode windows in build mode
  
• Various other fixes
  

Optimizations

• Glass door stickman rendering
  

• New summer track from Sinnott Soundworks
  
• Remember team selection in hiring window
  
• Use hearts instead of a smiley face for market recognition
  
• Clarified outdoor furniture error message to include "fenced areas"
  
• Ability to copy multiple lines of commands at once in the console
  

Fixes

• Fixed HR not hiring anyone because a few people on the team were dragging compatibility down below minimum standards
  
• Taking over a project from project management doesn't update next release date on task
  
• Starting a support or marketing task on a product released using project management will now take over active task instead of doing nothing
  

• Overhauled distribution deal bidding mechanic
  
• Balanced digital distribution cost
  
• Greatly increased accuracy of ISP cost calculation
  
• Ability to see bandwidth percentage for each distribution client in the distribution window
  
• Balanced hosting deal income
  
• Added keyboard shortcut to button tooltips and keyboard bindings for toggling team labels and wire mode
  
• Split physical and digital distribution tutorials and updated digital distribution tutorial with fixes and going over the new bidding mechanic
  
• Job satisfaction can now affect chance to call in sick
  

Fixes

• Fixed game sometimes bugging out in distribution window due to how the physical copies sold value was retrieved
  
• Fixed localization of specializations on new pie chart legends
  
• Checking furniture collision on replace did not account for rotation correctly and would allow furniture to overlap and stick through walls after being replaced
  
• Tutorials shouldn't auto skip after first tutorial message if skip condition was met before the message was shown
  

• Fixed not being able to expand work items because buttons would pop up
  
• Fixed game bugging out if opening info window on a project that has dependencies in beta
  

• Ability to use software that is in beta for product needs (Allows you to develop games for game engines in beta)
  
• Press ctrl to autocomplete a room when building up against previous rooms
  
• New build track from Sinnott Soundworks
  
• Count employee sick days and show in employee window, complaint window and wage window
  
• Count complaints and resignations handled by HR and show in HR management window
  
• Specialization degrade should change based on difficulty
  
• Instead of hiring very low compatibility employees, low skilled leaders in HR will now just take longer to find applicants that are less compatible on average
  
• Add product detail button in distribution window and total copies sold column
  
• Filter furniture assign window by teams/roles assigned to room and include role with name
  
• Added legends directly on piecharts
  
• Specialization pie chart in design document is now separated by art and code (This is a temporary fix, as the design document will be overhauled in Alpha 11)
  
• Project info window now includes specialization chart
  
• Shift + click a label in a chart legend to only show that stat (helpful for quickly isolating one item in a company's cashflow chart)
  
• Renamed "units sold" to "Net units sold" to clarify that refunds have been deducted from the total
  
• Lowered leader skill gain from HR
  
• Added AI company specialization to company detail window
  

Fixes

• Fixed bug caused by one or more mods setting software as an OS dependency without that software actually depending on an OS. Mods with this issue will be disabled and mods will now be incompatible if they cause this issue together
  
• Employee complaint demands were calculated incorrectly
  
• HR will now reject complaints if the employee has already demanded too much
  
• HR should not educate employees that are about to retire
  
• Fixed some license key/pc combinations resetting license key every time offline version launched
  
• Fixed race condition during new game load that could cause game to not finish pre-simulation, causing general instability, and missing companies and products
  
• Fixed some issues with furniture mod error logging and added base furniture name case insensivity
  
• Added fix in cases where rooms grouped for rent would be recursive, causing an out of memory crash when loading a rentable building
  
• Budget is now set automatically when accepting marketing deals
  
• Rare race condition when checking furniture availability could cause game error when loading game or placing furniture
  
• Fixed game bugging out if employees are fired while interacting with them in the role management window
  
• Added custom string formatter to avoid game bugging out if localization uses the wrong number of arguments in a string
  
• Fixed plot panel being in the wrong place for larger GUI scales
  
• Various other fixes
  

I've done some "behind the scenes" design work on Alpha 11, and I've ironed out most issues I had with how the new feature system should work. I'm fast tracking alpha 10, so I can move on to alpha 11. I don't expect more than a hotfix or two before I officially release alpha 10. Note that this does not mean I'm throwing out all the feedback you have provided for alpha 10, it just means I'm putting off working on it, until I get the new feature system in place, as that will heavily impact gameplay.

Changes

• Added new plural/singular localization XML nodes, which contain both the translation itself in singular and plural form, plus the subject as a postfix in lowercase in a single XML tag
  
• Added ability to compare localization UI files from Console by writing e.g. "COMPARE_LOCALIZATION French English"
  
• New winter track from Sinnott Soundworks
  
• Added ability to change the price of a product
  
• Changed how price affects sales when price is below market average
  
• The AI will now try to port software to new operating systems and also kindly ask any dependent software developers as well, e.g. game engines for games. This should decrease the chance of the player gaining a lot of money purely by the virtue of being first on an OS
  
• Ability to see and change multiple teams' work assignments in the team window
  
• Added warning popup when two employees dislike each other to help identify the exact employees
  
• Compatibility is now shown for each team when changing teams for one employee
  
• Specialization chart no longer counts specializations below the minimum team spec level when calculating average for a team, which makes it easier to see the effect of raising minimum spec level on software quality
  
• Added price warning and ability to change price before release if a product is priced way over market average, as this was causing some unintended 0 sale products
  
• Increased amount of game dev companies to fill out void in categories (only affects new games)
  
• Rebalanced stress levels to make stressed employee way less stressed and lazy employees a little more stressed
  
• Rebalanced personalities traits so all extremes are possible and average personality combination has medium trait values
  
• Employees will now automatically prefer to use computers which boost roles they are assigned to (note that it is still first come first served, so someone less suited for a PC might call dibs before a better suited employee does, you can reverse this by assigning manually)
  
• Half follower loss rate if release date has been announced
  
• Improved computer auto assignment
  
• Furniture tooltips should go away once action has been carried out by player
  
• Grouping rooms for rent that are already grouped in the map editor will now ungroup them all
  
• Work item filters are now saved
  
• Proper tutorial for new team window options
  
• Rebalanced print deal payouts
  
• Added warning when subsidiary is running out of money
  
• Improved company cashflow chart color, order and highlighting
  

Fixes

• All active print deals would get cancelled every time a company went bankrupt
  
• Toggling all in the multi select window would untoggle everything that had been filtered by the current search
  
• Products which had a million dollar price tag could end up generating sales if no other product had been released in the same category for at least 5 years
  
• Sometimes AI companies would avoid releasing software in a specific category because another company was planning to do it in several years
  
• Lazy employees left too early on average
  
• Stove quality state had no bearing on cooking
  
• Trees visible underground on load
  
• Made furniture ownership checks more robust to avoid them switching around on load (won't fix previous saves)
  
• Fixed employees walking in and out of the elevator when reaching their floor for no reason
  
• Made employees more likely to pick parking spots that are closer in height to where they want to go
  
• Fixed instances of employees walking through cars and backtracking when going from parking space to room on upper floors
  
• Moved chair repair point closer to avoid it getting blocked by stuff behind the chair
  
• Changed "Not qualified for assigned tasks" to "Not qualified for active tasks" to clarify that it does not apply to finished assigned tasks
  

The multi floor parking lot update is finished and this update is mostly focused on bugs, balancing and UI updates, hence the move to alpha 10.5.

I'm planning on doing another balancing pass in the next patch, but please keep in mind that balancing is not a priority currently. I'm trying to make sure the game is playable, but as game mechanics change often, keeping the game well balanced during alpha is not feasible. I will focus a lot more on balancing and the learning curve when Software Inc. reaches beta, until then you might experience suddenly getting rich, because the AI didn't make sensible choices or gaining fans is too easy, etc.

I only have a couple of "bigger" features I want to add in Alpha 10, so I expect to make it to alpha 10.6 or 10.7, before I move on to Alpha 11.

Changes

• Added cloud shadows
  
• Made trees jiggle in the wind
  
• Removed max cap on how much specialization level an employee can gain by working
  
• Specializations will now decrease for employees each month, but less as they age, so they start specializing as they get older depending on what they work on most often/have been educated in
  
• Business reputation now also positively affects average base skill for each wage bracket when looking for applicants
  
• Specialization charts comprising multiple employees will no longer count employees not assigned to the role shown
  
• Added warning when changing role of someone controlled by HR
  
• Added multi select functionality to the Your Releases window
  
• Turned up yellow color in data overlay mode, as it was making it hard to discern temperature
  
• Boosted employee skill gain from working a tiny bit
  
• Put consumer reach in product detail window
  

Fixes

• Industrial fans aren't cooling correctly and servers aren't giving off noticeable heat
  
• Employees gain both code and art skill in alpha phase even if project doesn't use that skill
  
• Undoing server deletion doesn't register and recreate server connections + other undo initialization issues
  
• Guests should be removed from game if time is skipped
  
• Per month column in distribution window did not account for print jobs inactive due to hitting maximum
  
• Scrollbar in hire window specialization chart was cropping art bars
  
• Print and server deals stuck around after buying out company bugging out game
  
• "Find owner" in product detail window not scrolling company list correctly in some cases
  
• Fixed employees getting stuck on ground floor ramp
  
• Employees set as artists and programmers would work slower on a project that only had either code or art work to be done
  
• PC addon boosts were applied based on role instead of work done in alpha phase
  
• Fixed save games breaking if a server furniture mod failed to load
  
• Various other fixes